Day 1: Welcome to Scotland

May 17, 2018, Edinburgh
The first day of the capstone field trip began with an exhausting plane ride and a beautiful hike up to Arthur's seat. The hike is not difficult, gives a great 360 view of the city of Edinburgh and contains interesting geological sites as well. Arthur's seat has sedimentary layers with an igneous intrusion called a sill. The first stop we made at the north end of the trail gave us a good view of the sedimentary layers underneath the sill, these sedimentary layers appeared to be dipping away from the hiking path. We continued to walk the trail and came across Hutton's rock and followed the trail up to Hutton's section.
Hutton's section is one of the most significant geological feature seen throughout the hike. The site is at the base of the Salisbury Crag and used as a reference point used by James Hutton in order to demonstrate the relationship between igneous and sedimentary rocks. This idea challenged both the Plutonists and the Neptonists. Plutonists believed that igneous rocks forming the earth originated from intrusive magmatic activity whereas Neptunists believed that rocks formed from the crystallization of minerals in the early Earth's ocean. The visibility of both sediments and igneous rocks helped build a relationship between the two rock types. Below is a picture of Huttons section, where you can see the contact between the sedimentary and igneous rocks. The layer of sedimentary rocks was dipping at 20 degrees in the north east direction.

After the hike to Arthur's seat we went for our first of many grocery trips. After going grocery shopping I tripped and fell on the street because I wasn't paying attention and ran into a concrete barrier on the side of the street. This was a very embarrassing end to the beginning of our trip and a great way to begin my 27th birthday. In conclusion, I would recommend everyone (including non-geologist) to go up to Arthur's seat to get a beautiful view of the city and to watch where they walk in Edinburgh.
 
-View of Edinburgh-
- Lindsay

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